mattiasNYC said:
JohnRoberts said:
That old saw is tired... (most intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had weapons), he sure wanted everybody to believe he did,
That's not true. You had at "worst" the sentiment that inspections weren't going as smooth as they should have, but nothing was found. Nada. You had both Scott Ritter and the Swede, whatever his name is, tell people, ahead of the war, that there was absolutely no evidence Saddam's regime had WMDs constituting an imminent threat. The "most intelligence agencies" meme is a bit of a rewriting of history.
My recollection is that there was more than US intelligence (Brit I think.) I'll back off my "most" characterization and say "some".
There is little question he planned to restart his program the minute he could, and he had already demonstrated his willingness to use them, on even his own citizens (kurds).
JohnRoberts said:
and there are credible arguments that he moved some to Syria, when things heated up.
An "argument" is not evidence. I haven't seen a single piece of conclusive or even suggestive evidence that he shipped them off there.
That's why I said arguments....If there was hard evidence I would have said evidence.
JohnRoberts said:
I watched Powell address the UN and he presented a laundry list of reasons why Saddam needed to go. The WMD tick on that list was what resonated with the public and took on a life of it's own in the media.
First of all, it was spectacular that the Bush administration and Powell had the balls to stand in front of the rest of the world and use, as supposed evidence, a refined drawing based on a sketch based on a translated interview by a foreign intelligence service from a questionable source. A bit different from the photos of the Cuban missile-crisis era. I mean, it was just ludicrous. On top of that a forged memo. I mean, there was nothing in terms of evidence. There may have been different arguments, but WMDs posing an imminent threat wasn't one of them.
In hindsight we know after the fact that they got some bad intel on that.
As for WMD taking on a life on its own in the media; I think that's ignoring just why that happened. Frank Luntz, hired by Republicans, simply told them to phrase language so that Saddam and Iraq would be connected - emotionally - with 9/11 and Al Qaeda. It worked wonders. His own words on it are quite astounding. Even Cheney admitted that the WMD argument was chosen to be pushed to the population because it was the one the most likely to resonate. All fear-mongering to get an emotional response and support for the war. This wasn't something that the media ran with by itself, this was carefully thought out.
Clipped from Powell's UN address
powell said:
I asked for this session today for two purposes: First, to support the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix reported to this council on January 27th, "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it."
And as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq's declaration of December 7, "did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998."
My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq's involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions.
OK they were leading with the WMD but Saddam was not completely innocent and routinely cheated on UN mandates. He sheltered some Al Qaeda fighters (not many) and promoted terrorism in the region. In Palestine he rewarded the families of suicide bombers with $25,000 checks, $10,000 for families of any killed in confrontation with Israel, $5,000 for those with houses destroyed by Israel. In two years he gave Palestinian families $10M dollars in this ugly quid pro quo. If that isn't promoting terrorism I don't know what is.
JohnRoberts said:
Do we think Assad has WMD? Oh yeah they were all destroyed (cough), but now reportedly ISIL has used mustard gas (in Allepo). I wonder if those were Saddam's, Assad's, or they mixed up a fresh batch of their own mustard ? Apparently mustard gas is popular in that region.
The US should know, Reagan took Saddam's Iraq off of the don't-sell-arms-to-these-thugs list so that the precursors could be sold to him. They were American. I suppose the US could check its records to see where stuff came from.
Indeed alliances in the region can and have changed multiple times. Routinely these are "lesser evil" choices between one dictator or the other. The only other choice is to have no influence in the region at all.
JohnRoberts said:
People can be goaded into supporting violence for defensive purposes, but occupation and nation building while spending trillions is a completely different issue. That's what should have been on the table from the get-go. Obama can only be blamed so much for this. He didn't get the US into this, and I think Americans were just tired of war and paying for it all.
He blew the pull-out... IMO he owns that turning a victory in Iraq into a failure.
Well, it's awfully convenient to seemingly ignore that hadn't the US attacked in the first place we wouldn't be talking about who's to blame in the first place. Do you want to live in a pretend-democracy or not? Either the people get to choose someone who carries out their will or you have a leader spending even more money and lives against it. It was Bush's fault for not preparing the population for it and for getting the US in there in the first place. Blaming Obama for pulling out is relatively lame I think.
And I think it's lame to blame Bush for mismanaging the peace. Against the advice of his military advisors Obama did not fight harder to renegotiate the 2008 status of forces agreement. Candidate Bush is now claiming that there was an agreement for 10,000 troops that Obama refused to sign, that is political spin (false), but Obama did not live up to his promise to end the Iraq war responsibly IMO . We still have 25-30k military in So Korea.
JohnRoberts said:
That sucking sound in the middle east is the US pulling out like a road runner cartoon.
And what's the solution here? What have we learned from the past? We can look at specific nations, like Afghanistan or Iran, and we can see that trying to change governments or invade and occupy simply doesn't work. The Soviets tried it... the CIA tried it.... the US tried it in Iraq... Vietnam... Afghanistan.... when does it work? What's that saying about doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different outcome?
I have been consistently critical of the surge in Afghanistan. In my judgement today they still do not have an adequate private sector economy to support a strong central government. To prevent the collapse of Kabul will require long term financial support from the outside.
I feel sorry for the people of Afghanistan who for several generation have only known life as an occupied country. They expect us to eventually pull out too, so they are already cutting deals with the Taliban who expects to return to power. Russia is taking the opportunity to provide military aid and get their camel's nose into that tent.
To answer your question, I don't know... I have watched the mission in Afghanistan morph from denying Al Qaeda safe haven (which Bush accomplished in a matter of weeks) to trying to nation build a strong central representative government, essentially wresting power from war lords and the Taliban. Previously the Taliban's largest crime was taking money from al Qaeda to tolerate their training camps and safe harbor there.
Even a causal inspection of Taliban culture is abhorrent to western thinkers, so without ever declaring so, we appear to be waging war against that culture, and a resurgence of war lords.
I have a hard time being optimistic about standing up an effective military/police force in Afghanistan, while today is far better than it ever was, and more time should make it even better. If we pull out now, chaos will ensue and any gains made from the blood and treasure there will be lost.
A cold calculated decision would be to pull out yesterday (recall I opposed the surge), but from where we are now, a slow gradual draw down is the most humane. Ripping off the bandage now could cause the patient to bleed to death.
Sorry for the non-answer answer....
JR
PS: I rather dislike rehashing old arguments and doubt we will ever agree about everyone's motives.
